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| May 2008 |
| Billie Silvey |
| The Sound Track In My Mind |
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| Some people spend a lot of time listening to music. I spend a lot of time singing (particularly in the shower and while I’m driving). I also listen to the sound track in my mind. My mental sound track contains a great many songs—some classical, some jazz, some songs from Broadway musicals and a lot of popular music by the Beatles and earlier artists. Some of these songs are about music. I think of Julie Andrews on a mountaintop, arms outstretched, singing, “The hills are alive. . . ,” and later in the movie, “Doe, a deer, a female deer. . . .” Today, because I have a two-year-old granddaughter, it’s kittens bouncing on a keyboard singing about “practicing our scales and our arpeggios.” But a major part of my sound track is the religious music I grew up with and have sung almost every week since. The first song leader I remember in my small-town Texas church was Mr. Merryman, an American Indian with a sagging face and a hearing aid that sometimes accompanied him. He’d set the pitch by singing a few scales, “do, mi, sol, do, sol, mi do, ” but sometimes we’d have to start over if it was too high for the sopranos and tenors or too low for the altos and basses. He used to walk to church with his wife following three steps behind. I remember his leading “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks.” Their oldest daughter, Maude Bowe, taught me to sing alto (I’m really a second soprano, but I didn’t know that until I was in college). Our first hymnal had a light blue cover. I can’t recall the name of the book, but a song I loved, “Day Is Dying in the West,” was near the front of it. Later, we got “Great Songs of the Church,” with a darker blue binding. It had a new song, “How Great Thou Art“ pasted in the inside cover and all the verses of “Master, the Tempest Is Raging.” Most of my growing-up life, my father led singing. He used first a tuning fork and then a pitchpipe, so we didn’t start songs over any more. I remember his marking time, first with his hand, then with his whole body, as he slowly rocked back on the heels of his cowboy boots, then forward onto the balls of his feet. I also remember his mischievous glee in leading “Up from the Grave He Arose” on Easter Sunday and “Joy to the World’ at Christmastime. (If you didn’t grow up in Churches of Christ, you won’t get the joke!) We were a singing family. We sang at home; we sang in the car; but mostly, we sang as we put out the weekly newspaper my parents owned. We sang harmony—four-part on church songs, improvised on others. My mother and my sister Barbara sang the melody, I sang alto, and daddy alternated between tenor and bass. When I was in college, I remember singing our minister Carl Spain’s favorite song, “Just As I Am,” at the Hillcrest Church in Abilene. After we moved to Los Angeles, I learned “Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life,” a fitting anthem to my new city. When Frank was on an aircraft carrier off Vietnam, “Peace, Perfect Peace” never failed to bring me to tears, especially the verse about “loved ones far away. In Jesus’ keeping we are safe and they.” And there was “The Sands of Time,” which was sung at both my parents’ funerals, and I hope will be sung at mine. I still can’t sing “glory, glory dwelleth in Emmanuel’s land” without a catch in my throat. At the Vermont Avenue church, it was tall gangly Doyle Barnes who leaned across the pulpit to lead the hymns, including “Amazing Grace.” Later came the pure rapture of my husband Frank’s leading and my feeling almost as though we were the only people there. Then singing as I walked around bouncing our babies, first Kathy and then Robert, in time to the music. Now I sing with friend and fellow writer Dean Shaw, who leads hymns like “There’s a Stirring Deep Within Me” and spirituals like “Amen” and “Go Tell It on the Mountain” at Culver Palms. At first we used the big, heavy tan “Songs of Faith and Praise,” but now we mostly sing hymns projected on a screen. One advantage is that you can watch the song leader and still read the words. Also, you can sing out better when you aren’t looking down into your hymnal. But the notes are not projected, which makes it harder to learn the alto on new songs. I have always enjoyed the a cappella (unaccompanied singing) tradition of our church. To my mind, singing is the great leveler. You don’t have to have take expensive lessons or own an instrument to sing. You don’t even have to have a good voice. One of my professors in college couldn’t carry a tune, but he sang out strongly with an expression of pure ecstasy on his face. After all, church singing isn’t for entertainment. It’s to praise God, and praise comes from the heart, not the diaphragm. A singing church doesn’t need an expensive organ, either--or even a building. You can sing anywhere you happen to be. Some of my best memories are singing with other Christians around a campfire at the Yosemite Family Encampment, in the gym at the Pepperdine Lectures, or at the Black-and-White Women’s Retreat at Lake Arrowhead. I enjoy being able to sing on my way to work and as I clean house. My heart can sing without a sound even in a crowd as I praise God and run through the sound track in my mind. |